IT service provider's multi-customer and multi-tenant environments

Abstract

The IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) provides guidance for IT service management but does not specifically address the challenges that Service Providers face. A Service Provider is an enterprise whose business is to manage the IT business of other enterprises. To manage its cost the Service Provider must host multiple diverse customers in a shared environment. The customers have unique business requirements, such as customizations of the processes based on customer policies and role, which the Service Provider must address while supporting the services in such a way that they provide functionality that appropriately spans organizational units, satisfying the customers' goals to be ITIL compliant and meeting the economic pressures of constantly reducing cost. The paper considers the impact that hosting multiple customers in a shared environment has on data segregation, process definition, and security, explores different models of Service Provider operations and outlines future work needed in this area. © 2007 IEEE.